Two women, both middle-aged, one trim, the other, er, matronly -- well, they saved the country from
another change of government last week.

Under discussion are -- yep, you are right! -- Congress president Sonia Gandhi and AIADMK matriarch J Jayalalitha. The latter, if you remember, had needled Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee endlessly, raising questions about his survival in the PMO.

But last week was anything but normal -- you see, there cropped up something called
female chauvinism which prevented Mata Jaya from booting out Vajpayee!

"Amma would have done it," say sources in Poes Garden, "But she was unwilling to pull the plug without first clinching a deal with the Congress about who would head the next government."

And that, precisely, was where the catch was. Amma, you see, is not on talking terms with Sonia. Not after she called the Congress president names in public.

"Jayalalitha was loath to take the lead in establishing direct contact with the Congress boss," sources reveal, "Her amour propre wouldn't allow it."

As for Sonia, she was not convinced
about the viability of a
Congress-led government at this juncture. She did despatch
Congress Working Committee member R K Dhawan to Madras to talk things over with Amma. But Dhawan outsmarted himself: he claimed to have come on his own and not as an emissary of Sonia!
A miffed Jayalalitha refused to grant him an audience
despite several requests.

"He even sought the help of a controversial
Bombay industrialist to get him in, but
to no avail," sources claim, "But for this, Vajpayee would probably have been an ex by now..."

Women -- oh, but for them what would the mankind have done!

Heart of gold

Boy George Fernandes, our angry
old defence minister, has a heart of gold. Which device he amply exposed to the Madras regiment of the Indian army recently.

Fernandes, if you recall, has been doing his bit, cheering the
troops at the front-line. On a recent tour, he hit it off well with
a jawan who spoke three
South Indian languages while serving him
refreshments. On his return to the base that evening,
the minister was shocked to learn
that the jawan had died in shelling from across the
border.

A visibly moved Fernandes, who, unlike his predecessor Mulayam Singh Yadav, uses the defence aircraft sparingly, ordered the body flown to the jawan's home in Tamil Nadu by special plane.

Clearly, the fire-and-brimstone spewing Fernandes is
soft and humane inside.

Blurred distinction

Now it is official. What had started some years ago as an
aberration in one Bombay-centric newspaper chain has now got implied sanction from no less than the President of India.

On Saturday, June 27, President K R Narayanan played a warm and gracious
host at tea to the press corps. This was his first formal meeting
with the media. Scores of senior and not-so-senior journalists
exchanged pleasantries with him over light refreshments.

Veterans of several such receptions, however, were
surprised to find manager-types
and PR
executives rubbing shoulders with the President. What particularly proved to be an
eyesore to hardened journos was the presence of the almost entire
managerial team of a foreign television network which has been consistently
devising ways to buy official favours.

May be the President too has come to terms with the reality that
freedom of the press is in effect the freedom of publishers and managers!

Paying for his honesty

There's an IAS officer called E A
S Sarma who, till the other
week, was the Union power secretary.

This week, he's the expenditure secretary in the Union finance ministry.

Sarma's summary transfer, from an all-important job
to an unimportant one, is, according to officials, because he is
honest.

Yes, that's right: because he is honest!

Officials allege that the trouble started when the officer, of the 1965 IAS cadre,
known for his expertise in the power sector, resisted
attempts by the Hinduja brothers to renegotiate the terms of the 1,000 MW fast-track project in Vishakhapatnam.

The government was not obliged to alter the terms of the
counter-guarantee to Hinduja National Power. It was duly signed
and sealed by the United Front government.
But finding a more favourable regime, the Hindujas insisted on more favourable
changes.

But Sarma was in the way...

Now the Hindujas are expected to have it their way,
all the way in the ministry.

Power of the press

The one-step forward, two-step backward Union
Budget had those odd elements extending group-specific concessions to people close to the BJP leadership.

Among those bestowed with a special
favour was a relatively new weekly,
whose publisher had managed to get
the ears of a controversial chartered accountant close
to Lal
Kishinchand Advani.Yashwant Sinha's maiden Budget cut the import duty of the art paper used by the weekly drastically!

Following this, the management of the weekly was so
enamoured that its voluble editor,
who had had no kind
word to say about the BJP, discovered overnight sterling
qualities about Advani!

But the weekly did not reckon with the guiles of its more
established rival. The older publication soon pressed
into service its go-getter
editor to try and wangle a commensurate reduction
in the paper
imported by it. Soon the fixer was
bullying and bulldozing his way into the houses and offices of
senior BJP ministers and finance ministry mandarins. In fact, so
enraged was the agent of the old weekly that he exchanged hot,
and largely unprintable words, with Revenue Secretary N K
Singh in the office of one of the
aides to the prime minister!

Now a little bird tells us that the BJP leadership has
finally caved in to the pressure. The import duty on the paper used by
the older weekly too will be cut. Pending the
notification of the said order, the weekly has put on hold the
delivery of its imported consignments.